Education: Looking Backward, Sourly

At its most caustic, social satire is brewed from sweet reasonableness,
and nothing could be more reasonable than the modest educational
proposal that is the basis of a spoofing report from the 21st century
by British Sociologist Michael Young. First premise of The Rise of the
Meritocracy, 1870-2033, published in London, is merely this: every
bright child, regardless of his parents' wealth or lack of it, should
get the best education he is capable of absorbing. The proposition is
hardly alarming, but by the book's end it has left a trail like...